"The Assassination Of Rigley Fields"

Rigley Fields was perfect.Tall, lean and fit, with a shock of reddish blond hair that fell forward covering his azure blue eyes on those rare bad hair days. Rigley toiled as an automobile mechanic in a small garage at the center of town. His superlative mechanical skills, his innate honesty and decency, his pearly white teeth, his charitable nature, his captivating smile, his angelic singing voice, his staunch patriotism, his expertise at billiards, his photographic memory, his fluency in several of the Slavic languages and his movie star good looks all combined to make him adored far and wide. If there was a fly doing the backstroke in this delicious soup that was Rigley it had to be the paralyzing shyness that had plagued him since birth. During his infancy, Rigley, to the consternation and delight of his parents, refused to cry. It was not that he was never overcome by hunger, thirst or diaper rash; it was simply that he was just too embarrassed to bawl. This affliction matured along with Rigley manifesting itself in myriad and sundry ways. When called upon to participate in a lesson at school Rigley's body would stiffen, his eyes would roll to the back of his head, his tongue would double in size flopping out of the corner of his mouth and he would slide corpse-like out of his chair landing on the floor in a heap. His parents, realizing that falling over in a dead faint every five minutes or so would put Rigley at a disadvantage, dragged him to every hospital, clinic, medical specialist, chiropractor and tribal shaman within a five hundred mile radius, all to no avail. Finally, after performing a battery of psychological and medical examinations a world renowned neurologist sat Mr. and Mrs. Fields down in his office and with a face twitching with the effort to conceal his frustration and annoyance pronounced his diagnosis; "What this kid needs is a good swift kick in the pants." Rigley's back was now up against the wall both literally and figuratively. With his usual tenacity Rigley decided that he would have to get off his by now sore backside and devise a strategy to overcome this strange affliction. Fueled by an almost palpable sense of desperation and after several false starts he tip-toed down the yellow brick road that led to his eventual salvation. The road well chosen; comedy. Rigley spent countless hours studying the films of virtually all the legendary comic actors of Hollywood until every one of their hilarious tricks of the trade were deeply embedded in his psyche. Thanks to the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges Rigley was finally able to conquer the inconvenient fainting spells and the nasty flop sweat replacing them with a repertoire of jokes, double entendres, pratfalls and snappy patter that, in the lingo of show business, killed.

Among the very few who did not find themselves totally enamored of Rigley's comedy stylings was his very own girlfriend Benadetta Jones. Benadetta, a waitress at the local greasy spoon, was the Barbie to Rigley's Ken. Almost as tall as he, with legs up to there, a waistline you could slip a wedding band around and two breasts so perfect that even Michelangelo would not have dared to sculpt them, Benadetta faced the world with shiny jet black hair that fell to her shoulders, dark eyes mascaraed shades of charcoal grey and lips painted a glossy ripe peach. She projected the aura of a prepubescent Cleopatra. Notwithstanding her physical charms, most people thought of Benadetta as rather vapid. Truth be told, in the race to form a personality she had long ago outrun vapidity leaving it behind to eat her dust. Benadetta just could not seem to wrap her mind around anything or anyone that was not in the same room with her. Various attempts at allowing her mind to roam far afield resulted in a migraine headache that put her out of commission for up to three days. She guessed that she loved Rigley because he always seemed to be within earshot. Whenever anyone reminded her how lucky she was to be with him she inevitably shot back with the same pointed retort; "Oh that Rigley. Him and his stupid jokes".

More than one thousand miles to the east, across a great cultural divide, destiny, like an evil witch gone mad, cackled hysterically and busied herself concocting a terrible potion that would soon turn the world on its huge, bloated head. Dr. Senza Vergogna would soon find herself sucked inadvertently into the hellish vortex. Senza was the President and Chief Financial Officer of the nationwide women's rights organization Very.Angry.Girls.Increasingly.Not.Amused (V.A.G.I.N.A) which boasted more than three million members whom she led into the gender wars in the manner of a Roman general cutting a bloody swathe through Gaul. Her weapons were an intellect superior to that of almost any other being on the planet, a steely tenacity that did not allow her to back down from any confrontation and an almost frightening talent for manipulating the print and electronic media. She held a Doctorate in Women's Studies from Harvard University and a Masters Degree in Human Anatomy from Tufts Dental College, was the author of six very successful books, five of which managed to claw their way on to the New York Times Best Seller List and boasted highly placed politicos, movie stars and various Heads of State amongst her most intimate friends. Her entourage consisted of a personal trainer who kept her in perfect physical form, a make-up artist and hair stylist who were the latest rage in Hollywood, a personal shopper who kept her feet firmly planted on the cutting edge of fashion and a private security brigade headed by Turk Torkelson a shaved headed professional assassin and former member of Israel's Mossad Intelligence Agency. Whenever she deemed it necessary to portray a more homespun image she would don her mother of pearl framed eyeglasses and twist her trademark waist-length blond hair into a bun at the top of her head. This was the Senza Vergogna that was electronically flung into the unsuspecting faces of countless television viewers around the world as she was interviewed by the famously unflappable Chief Correspondent Wolf Blitzer at CNN World News Headquarters. She sat before Wolf and the cameras with the icy defiance of an unrepentant Christian about to be served as an appetizer to a pride of starving lions. Wielding her voice like a surgical scalpel, Senza sliced her way through the vital organs of history pointing out each and every crime of abuse perpetrated by men against womankind. She somehow managed to cover every era of human development inexplicably placing major emphasis on the Plague Years and the Disco Music Revolution of the late 1970's. Suddenly, as her professionally painted lips settled into an eerie Mona Lisa smile, she wagged her finger condescendingly at Wolf and the cameras like some well-dressed white trash school marm and in a voice reminiscent of a diva scatting her way through a long forgotten jazz classic she said; "Gentlemen, after lengthy and thorough consultations with my sisters-in-arms, we have come to the conclusion that the only solution to putting an end to the systematic and criminal treatment of women by YOU is to insist that YOU become more like US. I am not suggesting wholesale gender change, after all, men do serve at least two vitally important functions in our society; namely, as participants in the act of procreation and the lifting of heavy objects. The choice is yours. Either "FEMINIZE" or tomorrow morning at nine o'clock sharp Eastern Standard Time the GATES OF HEAVEN WILL SLAM SHUT." Senza then jumped to her feet and pumping her fist into the air as if acknowledging Benito Mussolini's entrance into the room, she whooped like a Banshee and triumphantly shouted what would become the new female war cry "FEMINIZE OR CELIBATIZE" over and over as she slowly faded to black. Commentators later unanimously agreed that Dr. Senza Vergogna had definitively and undeniably gotten her point across and that the famously unflappable Chief Correspondent Wolf Blitzer had finally gotten himself definitively and undeniably flapped.

Seeing oneself as others see one is a gift reserved for the most fortunate among us. Unfortunately, Lilah LaFontaine was not so fortunate as to be counted among the most fortunate. Host of the almost universally ignored "man-on-the-street" interview segment of the local nightly news broadcast, Lilah was possessed of a self-image so far removed from reality that a fleet of battleships could easily have navigated undetected through the gap. Early on the morning following Dr. Senza Vergogna's scandalous performance at CNN World News Headquarters, at the exact hour daylight begins to nudge night time out of the spotlight, Lilah found herself prowling the streets accompanied by her long suffering cameraman Joe Mertz scavenging for victims. Strapped into the passenger seat of long suffering Joe Mertz's twelve year old Toyota she gazed out of the window straight through her own reflection and into the half-light of dawn watching familiar images fly past her eyes, each one an unannounced slap in the face. Dreaming dreams that are the sole property of the damaged,Lilah, drenched in a professional veneer so thick, so impenetrable she seemed to have been dipped into a vat of the stuff, was peering through the miniscule portal of the imaginary jetliner that habitually whisked her off to newsworthy exotic hot spots where she would conduct in-depth gab fests with Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Queens, Potentates and loathsome international financiers currently doing hard time as guests of the Federal Correctional System. Lilah deplaned at the entrance to Rigley's workshop with the bearing of a Greek goddess descending from one of the heavens and a bad case of jet lag. She accosted our grease-stained Jesus as he arrived to put in another honest days work raising deceased motor vehicles from the dead. Lilah planted herself directly in front of Rigley each and every strand of her flaming red hair perfectly coiffed. left hand on hip, right hand clutching an oversized silver microphone so tightly it might have been the neck of the chicken destined for that evening's stew pot and legs spread as wide as her navy blue skirt, demurely falling just below the knee, would allow. Her prey cornered with no hope of a quick escape, Lilah slipped surreptitiously into her customary professional journalist drag and asked Rigley if he would care to share his take on Dr. Senza Vergogna's "Feminize or Celibatize" challenge issued the previous evening at CNN World News Headquarters, intimating that his opinion could be critical in solving the problem of world hunger and crucial in the discovery of cures for several life-threatening diseases. Rigley, not one to be swayed by such gratuitous flattery and relying on his all encompassing sense of decency, his well honed sense of selflessness, his ingrained sense of right and wrong and his aversion to more well-placed kicks in the pants from his parents, cast aside his terror of performing for an audience that might number in the thousands and falling back on that age-old technique perfected by his comedic heroes of yesteryear known, in the lingo of show business, as "winging it", looked directly into the blinking red light of the camera perched precariously on the shoulder of long suffering Joe Mertz like some pirate captain’s obscenity spewing cockatoo and began:

"HAHAHAHAHA! Thank you Lilah. Isn't she gorgeous folks? C'mon put your hands together for Lilah! HAHAHAHAHA! So, Ladies and Gentlemen, how's everybody doin? Anybody here from Philadelphia? HAHAHAHAHA! Hey Lilah, NASA called and they wanna know if you could tone down that red hair of yours a coupla shades cuz it's distractin the astronauts orbitin round the earth in the International Space Station. HAHAHAHAHA! Aw! C'mon folks just bustin her chops. C'mon Ladies and Gentlemen, give it up for Lilah. HAHAHAHAHA! So, it looks like the womenfolk are gonna hang a big DETOUR sign at the on-ramp to the Highway of Love. Well ladies, I love ya but that DETOUR'S gonna lead us right to downtown Gayville. HAHAHAHAHA! Ya know what they say, "in life when one door closes, another door opens." HAHAHAHAHA. When those great Gates of Heaven slam shut those great Doors of Sodom are gonna swing wide open. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Having opened a can of strictly forbidden worms and peeked into it Rigley's body, following in the grand tradition of Lot's wife, went rigid, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, his tongue doubled in size flopping out of the corner of his mouth and he fell to the ground in a heap. Lilah, like a chick stumbling from the shell of an egg, burst forth from the protective professional demeanor that had always served her so well and flung herself on top of Rigley's prostrate form straddling his hips hindquarters pointed due North and began to pummel him about the chest with her oversized silver microphone in a brave attempt to revive him accompanying each blow with an ear piercing "Get up you moron". The no longer long suffering Joe Mertz laughing so hysterically he almost lost consciousness and flaunting every existing law of gravity managed somehow to remain in an upright position filming the scene for posterity before joining Rigley on the ground in his own unique version of a heap. Three hours later, just as Dr. Senza Vergogna had threatened, millions of women throughout the land clapped their thighs together like the cymbals in the largest High School marching band ever assembled causing a thunderclap so powerful it set the windows to rattling in the more earthquake prone regions of the globe. Neither Rigley, nor Lilah, nor Joe Mertz, for that matter, could have suspected that very soon the hand of fate would pluck them all from the dung heap of obscurity and drop them, one by one, into the waiting arms of infamy. (To Be Continued)